KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Blue Springs School District will not need to pay more than $4 million to a transgender student who was denied access to male-designated bathrooms and locker rooms while enrolled, despite a jury ruling in the student’s favor.

Tuesday’s ruling comes as the latest blow in a 10-year legal battle between the district and the family of former student RJ Appleberry, a transgender man who was first denied access to district facilities when he was in middle school.

It also marks the state Supreme Court’s second encounter with Appleberry’s lawsuit, which took six years and an initial appeal to reach a jury trial. Appleberry’s case landed back on the state Supreme Court docket after a Jackson County judge overturned the jury ruling in 2022, prompting Appleberry to appeal again.

In Tuesday’s 5-2 ruling to deny his appeal, a majority of the court agreed that the evidence Appleberry provided in his case did not sufficiently show that the district discriminated against him as a man.

The judges based their ruling largely on discussion of Appleberry’s genitalia and what they deemed the definition of the term “sex,” disputing the legal weight of Appleberry’s amended birth certificate that designates him as male.

Steven Coronado, an attorney for Blue Springs Schools, told The Star that the district’s legal team is “pleased with the result and believe(s) justice has been served.”

Katherine Myers, an attorney for Appleberry, warned that the ruling could have consequences for other transgender Missourians.

“We are disappointed in this ruling and the profound effect it will have on the citizens of Missouri,” Myers told The Star. “Our firm is preparing a motion, which will provide the Court an opportunity to reconsider its decision.”

‘Legal sex is a misnomer’

In Tuesday’s ruling, the judges pointed to a distinction that Missouri law prohibits discrimination based on sex, not gender. However, the state’s discrimination law does not include a definition for the word sex.

Without a definition, the judges wrote, key words in state law “are given their plain and ordinary meaning with help, as needed, from the dictionary.”

The ruling cited a lengthy 2002 dictionary definition that describes sex as “genetically controlled and associated with special sex chromosomes.”

“This definition is premised on ‘sex’ as a biological classification of individuals as male or female,” the ruling reads. “Accordingly, the plain and ordinary meaning of ‘sex’ refers to one’s biological classification as male or female.”

The judges wrote that Appleberry “failed to make a submissible case of discrimination on the basis of male sex” because the evidence in the case showed he was denied access to school bathrooms because of his “female sex, rather than male sex.”

“The School District’s decisions were based on the fact that (Appleberry) had female genitalia,” the ruling reads.

Appleberry’s birth certificate has listed him as male since 2014. But that designation was not enough to define him as male in the eyes of the court, according to the ruling.

The judges wrote that one’s sex as denoted on their birth certificate “is not consistent with the plain meaning of sex.”

“The term ‘legal sex’ is a misnomer that may be more comparable with the term ‘gender’ and should not be used to analyze the statutory text of public accommodation protection,” the ruling reads.

The ruling also argues that jurors in Appeberry’s original trial were not given a clear definition of sex when voting on whether Appleberry’s male sex factored into the discrimination he allegedly faced.

A decade-long lawsuit

Appleberry, now 25, began publicly transitioning to male as a fourth grade student in 2009 and changed his name in 2010.

RJ’s mother Rachelle Appleberry first requested that the school district allow her son access to male-designated bathrooms and locker rooms when he was an eighth grader at Delta Woods Middle School, but the school refused. RJ instead used a single-stall unisex facility during his track and football seasons.

While enrolled at the now-closed Blue Springs Freshman Center in 2014, RJ Appleberry got the marker listed on his birth certificate switched to male. The district again refused to allow him into male-designated facilities at the Freshman Center — and later at Blue Springs High School South — on the basis of his genitalia, according to court documents.

RJ Appleberry’s family filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the district in 2015, alleging that RJ was receiving separate and unequal treatment on the basis of sex. A judge dismissed the case in 2016 without providing a reason, though the district’s lawyers argued that gender identity is not protected under the Missouri Human Rights Act.

Rachelle Appleberry, acting as plaintiff on her son’s behalf, appealed the case to the Missouri Supreme Court in 2019, where the court ruled 5-2 that their claim of sex discrimination was valid, allowing the case to go to jury trial in circuit court.

RJ had graduated from the district by December 7, 2021, when the Jackson County jury awarded the Appleberry family $4 million in punitive damages, plus $175,000 in legal fees.

In January 2022, the school district appealed the jury’s decision to the Jackson County Circuit Court to either overturn the jury ruling or schedule a retrial.

The district argued that Appleberry’s attorneys “failed to establish his sex as male” and “failed to establish his male sex was a contributing factor in the School District’s decisions that Plaintiff asserts were unlawful discrimination,” according to court documents.

Jackson County Judge Cory L. Atkins ruled in favor of the district in May 2022, reversing the jury verdict but conditionally allowing for a new trial. RJ Appleberry appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, leading to Tuesday’s decision, which denied his appeal.

In a statement to The Star, the Blue Springs School District wrote that it “value[s] the Court’s clarification and guidance on this issue.”

“The district will continue to create a school culture that respects and values all students and is dedicated to providing a safe learning environment free of discrimination and harassment,” a district spokesperson wrote. “The district complies with local, state, and federal laws.”

Dissenting voices

Two members of the Missouri Supreme Court filed dissenting opinions in Tuesday’s decision.

Judge Brent W. Powell wrote that the plaintiff presented sufficient evidence of sex-based discrimination during the jury trial, while Judge Paul Wilson wrote that the jury verdict was thrown out based on the judge’s understanding of sex discrimination and not that of the jury.

“Even if the only evidence was the district discriminated on the basis of the student’s genitalia, such evidence would be sufficient for the jury to conclude his sex was a contributing factor to the district’s discriminatory conduct,” Wilson wrote.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Transgender Law Center and Lambda Legal filed a joint “friend of the court” brief before the decision, arguing that discrimination against transgender people is inherently sex-based discrimination, inherently playing a role in the issues Appleberry faced no matter how his sex is legally defined.

The National Employment Lawyers’ Association also filed a brief in support of Appleberry, arguing that excluding him from male facilities based on his genitalia was discriminatory given that other students’ genders were instead assessed based on their birth certificates and other legal markers.

Appleberry previously told The Star that reflecting on his lawsuit — and the publicity surrounding it — can bring back upsetting memories.

“I didn’t realize just how wrong it was until later on, going through trial and looking at every detail of my entire life and the school situation,” Appleberry told The Star in 2022. “And I really hope that no other 13-year-old, 10-year-old or 15-year-old or whoever has to go through that.”

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